


This Is the Story

by busaikko



Series: Autumn Stories [31]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: scarvesnhats, M/M, Marauders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-31
Updated: 2005-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 10:43:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <b>Believe.</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is the Story

**Author's Note:**

> For the October 31 **scarvesnhats** prompt, the song "Red Right Ankle" by The Decemberists. Remus Lupin 20 years after Legacy.

**I. This is the story of your gypsy uncle  
** **You never knew because he was dead**

He is simply tired now, but it is impossible to explain. Each breath is forced against a weight of blankets on his chest that grows heavier. No one will say goodbye to him. He'd laugh, if he could.

The boys are with him now, he can tell because they cannot stop moving, touching, pushing, shuffling. They cannot believe that ever he was a boy moving through the universe, touching everything as if it were newly made, pushing and being pushed back, shuffling his feet through waves of autumn leaves. He can breathe those long gone autumn mists more easily than this sickroom air.

He says the boy's name, the name oh gods is the same despite the shock of yellow hair (and the other she gave his name, and to hear the both of them called twists his heart). They work together, the bright young boys, throwing open all the windows and raising the shades.

The cold pours in. He has gone too long without being cold. It is the caress of an old friend.

Their mother looks in, and he tells her he needs this, and he knows she is afraid. She sits with him and holds his hand. The sunlit boys are off running, banging doors and tossing balls, and he can hear his name, and he can hear 'Sirius,' 'Sirius,' he calls and he is called. The cold is inside him, where it belongs. The room is white with early winter sun, and he is in love again.

* * *

  
**II. This is the story of the boys who loved you  
Who love you now and loved you then**

"Sirius," he calls again, this time finally getting enough air into his lungs to vocalise, and the door bangs open against the wardrobe because the bedroom in their flat is far too small.

"You awake, then?" Sirius asks, the words casual but his eyes worried as he leans over the bed, fixing the quilts and brushing the hair back from Remus' face. "Lazy git. Feeling better?"

"Feeling rotten," Remus wheezes, and tries not to cough but coughs anyway. It hurts.

"Sit up a minute," Sirius says, and slips his pillow behind Remus' shoulders, rubbing his back until the spasms are gone. "I made you some soup." It is there on the bedside table and it smells wonderful. Remus cannot remember the last time he ate, which seems wrong, somehow.

"You're too good to me," he says, and Sirius beams.

"It's a secret fantasy of mine," Sirius says, punctuating his words with spoonfuls of soup. "Just like a Mills and Boon, don't you think? Pretty but impoverished young thing nurses heir to a grand fortune back to health, they fall in love, live happily ever after."

"Since when," Remus asks, amused, "are you such a romantic?"

"Since always." Sirius tries him on a bit of dry toast for variety but won't let him eat too quickly. After the soup and toast are gone, Sirius gets a flannel and washes his face, and then pours four different potions down Remus' throat. Remus throws his dignity to the wind and asks Sirius to brush his teeth. He suspects that no one in the Mills and Boon world ever had furry teeth.

With dinner and bath taken care of, Sirius crawls under the covers and wraps his arms around Remus tightly. Everything is off-kilter, and Remus cannot remember.

"What day is it?" he asks muzzily, looking out the window as if that might provide some clue.

"It's our third anniversary," Sirius says, and Remus nearly sits up from the shock.

"It can't be. I have reservations," he says, and Sirius starts laughing.

"You have pneumonia, love. I cancelled the reservations. It's OK." Sirius raises his head to nuzzle along the side of Remus' face. "It's not the end of the world. I made soup for you."

"It was very good soup," Remus says, and even though it wasn't salted and the carrots had been mushy he thinks that it was the best soup he's ever had. "What happened?"

Sirius grimaces and drops back down to the bed. "You had a cold right before the last change, and then a bad night, and two days later you couldn't breathe. Bits of you were turning blue. St Mungo's wouldn't take you," he said with a studied blandness that led Remus to suspect that heated words had been exchanged. "I asked Pomfrey to come, figuring better the sadist you know, right? Your fever broke yesterday, and you've been lounging around since then."

"Rotten anniversary for you," Remus says. The back of his neck feels as if someone is holding ice there, and he tries to pull the quilt up ineffectually. Sirius tucks him in tightly as Remus stares at his fingers, skeletal and shaking.

"I've got you, that's all I need," Sirius says, and rubs Remus' hands between his own. "You scared me, you know? You kept telling me I was dead. Yelling at me to come back."

Remus reaches up and runs his fingers through coarse black hair, feels the warmth of Sirius' skin, touches the gold rings in Sirius' ear. He pulls Sirius down into a kiss, hungrier for sensation than he had been for the soup.

He is warm in strong arms, he is pushed back by an insistent mouth, he is moving against a rhythm he knows instinctively. He can't _do_ anything, and it's frustrating, to have Sirius so close and be barely able to breathe.

"You did die," he says finally, regretfully. "Half my lifetime ago. I love you, and you died. And I got old."

Sirius grins down at him, one hand still tangled in his hair. "Well, what did you think you'd do, grow backwards and get younger?"

"You didn't get old," Remus says, and he feels his eyes prick with tears at the unfairness of it all.

Sirius wipes his face again, gentle and tender. "I ought to have," he says, slowly, "I wanted to, believe me."

"I don't believe in this," Remus says. "I don't believe in an afterlife, you know. I believe—"

"Hush," Sirius says, and kisses him again. "Just believe in me and you'll be OK. It only hurts the first time," and Remus laughs, because this is definitely not something he plans on doing again. He kisses, and wheezes, and laughs, and kisses Sirius again.

* * *

  
 **III. And remember how you found the key  
** **To his hide-out in the Pyrenees**  
 **But you wanted to keep his secret safe**  
 **So you threw the key away**

Neurons fired, stars went nova, tides slipped loose their bonds as the moon turned her face from the world forever. Blood moved from numb ankles to weary heart. His life cascaded down, brilliant against the sun, red and gold and black and grey eyes, the taste of bonfires and freedom, the smell of icy rain, and hands, hands everywhere as neurons stopped, as blood stopped, and he was gone.


End file.
